Genel Energy

Genel Energy (formerly Vallares) was established in June 2011, raising over $2 billion on the London stock market with the intention of establishing an oil and gas business.

Background

Toward the end of 2011, Vallares merged with Genel Enerji – a private Turkish company with oil exploration and production assets in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. A head office was established in London, with a small number of staff, to compliment the established finance, administration and support team in Turkey.

The Challenge

Within nine months Genel had expanded significantly. A number of assets had been purchased in Africa and in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The team in London had grown from just 8 people to 50, resulting in a second office in London to accommodate an expanding exploration team. The team in Turkey had also grown significantly.

The scale of growth in the business meant there was now a requirement to bring the accounting in London in-house and to upgrade the finance systems in Turkey. The system would need to provide seamless integration between the London office and offices in Turkey.

A new system would also have to satisfy all local finance requirements in respective currencies as well as international requirements, including multi-currency reporting.

The Solution

Genel capitalised on the opportunity to completely review and improve their finance processes.

Having considered SAP, Oracle, MS Dynamics and SunSystems, it was decided to implement a solution using Infor10 SunSystems (sometimes referred to as ‘SunSystems 6’). This fulfilled Genel’s joint venture accounting and reporting requirements. In addition, Genel opted for ‘Infor XM - Time Management’ as their integrated time recording solution.

Relevant to this implementation, the most significant advantages of Infor10 SunSystems include; support of multicurrency at a transactional and reporting level, enhanced reporting that simplifies authoring of custom reports and improves the efficiency of reporting, and many technical improvements to enable remote working with a single source of data.

With the various locations, speed of expansion and requirement for very high availability, the system had to be accessible, scalable and robust.

Working with Genel’s finance team, a centralised IT environment was designed specifically for the new finance system that could serve the entire group.

To minimise the risk of a single point of failure a fully redundant solution was implemented with clustered databases, redundant servers, robust network storage and an automated switch over in case of failure. Genel’s finance IT solution minimises down-time and ensures business continuity, helping to maintain their pace of development.

Combined, the new finance system and IT environment now provide a centralised financial accounting and reporting solution with a single source of financial data - instantaneously accessible from all of Genel’s offices.

Outcomes and Benefits for Genel Energy

The project started in October 2012 with a go live date of January 2013. However the implementation coincided with the appointment of a new Joint Venture Accountant. Genel were keen to accelerate the project so the go-live date was brought forward to November 2012 and within three weeks the system was in place - within six the core accounting functions were operational. Infor XM - Time Management was integrated soon after, going live in January 2013.

Genel is seeing significant reductions in both time and effort required by the entire finance team.

Efficiencies are most noticeable during month-end close, which includes; invoice and expense processing, time writing, cost allocations, account reconciliations, operating cost analysis, production of joint interest billings, DD&A calculations, asset and liability valuations and a full suite of group management reports with the entire group’s month close being complete and ready for distribution by the 9th working day.

All financial reporting is now generated directly from within the system with minimal manual intervention, resulting in a single source of data that maintains financial data integrity across the whole group.

"Progressive’s pragmatic approach, willingness to get their hands dirty and dedication to their work have all been key to a successful working partnership Not only have I been impressed with Progressive’s depth of expertise in finance, finance systems and the specifics of the oil and gas industry, but I’ve also been impressed with the speed in which our system implementation has been delivered. Their end-to-end service has gone far beyond design and implementation, and even now, post implementation, one of Progressive’s senior consultants is onsite coaching our team and providing ongoing support & training."

David McConnachie, Group Financial Controller, Genel Energy

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